Music News

Gym Class Heroes Detail The Making Of “The Fighter” Video

Related Tags:

As the world’s attention turns to the 2012 Olympics, and the gripping story of Olympic hopeful John Orozco, Gym Class Heroes sat down with CBS Local to explain how they ended up working with the world-class athlete, along with veteran music video director Marc Klasfeld, on their latest clip.

“This particular treatment that we chose for the video, for “The Fighter,” was by the director Marc Klasfeld…he wanted to go for a more documentary style video as opposed to a straight performance or a predictable whatever. We thought it was a cool idea,” singer Travie McCoy explained.

Orozco is currently in the midst of the mens gymnastic trials to make the Olympic team. He’ll know soon if he has earned a spot on the 2012 American team. “The Fighter” reveals a day in his life.

“Once we read more into the treatment, he brought up John Orozco who at the time was 19 years old, grew up in a tough neighborhood in the Bronx, faced all kinds of adversity as far as everyday life and just the kind of stuff you face growing up in the Bronx.”

As the video shows, it’s not an easy road to travel for even the most dedicated athletes but one who faces the trials of one of the toughest of all New York City boroughs makes his excellence even less likely.

“But he, as opposed to rolling with the wrong crowd or getting into trouble, he chose to be a gymnast and we thought it was…synonymous with the song and the message in the song.”

McCoy says the band were all pleased with how the video turned out.

“It’s a very visually stunning video. And it’s really different from what we’re used to doing…we don’t really take ourselves seriously and usually our videos reflect that. This song is more of a personal, more of a inspirational/motivational song, so we wanted the video to express that.”

And relays that they’re happy to confound expectations, both with the song and the video they created to accompany it.

“I think a lot of people thought, when this video came out, it’d be about boxing or something because of the title of the song and there’s references to boxing throughout the song. Watching John do what he does is so captivating, we thought it was the perfect route to go.”